India’s Beef Boom Threatened as Age-Old Tensions Flare
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As a centuries-old dispute over beef intensifies in India, cattle transporter Shafiullah Mohammad Sharif Shah is caught in the middle.
Hindu vigilantes set fire to one of Shah’s trucks in December as it carried six water buffalo to a government-owned slaughterhouse outside Mumbai, he said. They beat up the driver and set the animals free, according to Shah. With such attacks becoming common, business has slowed so much that Shah says his five trucks may be repossessed if he can’t make a monthly loan payment of 150,000 rupees ($2,390).